A Business Intelligence Framework for South African Universities

This study demonstrates the researcher’s efforts to put into practice the theoretical foundations of information systems research in order to come up with a context-aware business intelligence framework (CABIF) for the South African higher education institutions. Using critical realism as the philosophical underpinning and mixed methods research design a business intelligence (BI) survey was deployed within the South African public higher education institutions to measure the respondents’ satisfaction and importance of business intelligence characteristics. The respondents’ satisfaction and importance of the 34 observed business intelligence variables were subjected to principal components analysis and design science research to come up with the CABIF. The observable business intelligence variables were drawn from four latent variables namely technology and business alignment; organizational and behavioural strategies; business intelligence domain; and technology strategies. Overall this research provides conceptual and practical insights into how contextualised aspects of BI directly or indirectly impact on the quality of managerial decision making within the South Africa.